Memories

When you are little, you don't realize that certain aspects of your family's life don't represent how the rest of the world lives. My sisters and I don't really associate with my dad's side of the family anymore, mainly because my dad is dead and we don't have any desire to see most of them. We see a couple of our cousins occassionally, but for the most part we don't see anyone else. My sisters and I laugh a lot about our grandmother. She was one of those holy rolling, Bible thumping, Pentecostal ladies. She did not think females should wear pants because somewhere in the Bible it said not to. My middle sister said that she found that passage underlined in one of Grandma's old Bibles she somehow acquired. I am surprised that we were allowed to wear shorts at all when we went there in the summer! My sister also found the "spare the rod adn spoil the child" passage underlined, which probably explained why we were swatted with switches. Guess that is why we all turned out so well. Thanks Grandma! Being the holy roller that she was, Grandma believed in the gift of speaking in tongues. I remember many occassions ascending the steps to her house and hearing her speaking in tongues. I am not going to bad mouth anyone's belief in the gift of tongues, I do believe it can happen. Yet, with her- she always said the same thing! I guess the good Lord wanted to get that message across to someone because I heard the same phrase for as long as I could remember. She would always call her old lady friend, Gertie (I named a cat after her) and they would pray over the phone. They would pray for what seemed like hours. I often wondered what Gertie was doing on the other end. Was she praying too? Or did she put Grandma on speaker phone and go about her business? Grandma always had this fantasy that my dad was going to be a preacher someday. I don't know what ever gave her that idea, but she held to it. I guess he would have made a good preacher since he'd probably done quite a bit of sinnin' in his life. My sister and I also laugh about our tick memories. Just so you know, in the past 20 years, I might have had one tick on my body. But, when we went to my dad's for the summer and stayed at Grandma's- ticks were an everyday occurence. I guess they could not afford Deep Woods Off or an exterminator because "pickin' ticks" was a way of life at Grandma's. Everyday she would pick up her dog, Ellick, and start the tick search. She would gather her tweezers (which she probably also used to pluck her chin hairs) and the tick jar. This was a small bottle, always glass and always see through, filled with alcohol. Grandma would pick the ticks off the dog and put them in the tick jar. I can still hear the clink clink of the tweezers against the glass. I don't know why the jar was never emptied after the tick sessions, but it was not. It was always a pleasant sight to see the ton o' ticks sitting beside Grandma's chair, usually on top of her Bible. You could not help but miss them and be amazed. I will start putting more memories out there for you. I have lots more, but people complain about how long my blogs are, so I won't put them all out today!